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More Buddhism for Nerds - blogpost link

Earlier in the week we brought you images from a Buddhist temple in Thailand that has a mural featuring scifi characters like Neo, Bumblebee from Transformers and even Anakin’s podracer. Today comes video from Japan of a 16th century Buddhist temple trying to hip up its image by going after the otaku. They’ve created an anime character mascot, and even hire a girl to cosplay her in public to do recruiting. In fact the monks actually PRAY to a statue of the character, who is modeled after the Shinto goddess of art and wisdom. And they’ve created some kind of hideous video gamey jingle that I suppose appeals to the part-cyborg youth of modern cyberpunk Tokyo.

The new campaign began in 2009 with anime-inflected ads and signs; apparently kids have been taking their pictures in front of the signs and they’ve turned into a pop phenomenon. Japan.

Re: More Buddhism for Nerds - blogpost link

This is one of many efforts by temples around Japan to make Buddhism more attractive for young folks. I fully support it.

In this case, it is by a Nichiren Buddhist temple outside of Tokyo (Nichiren Buddhism is the sect which chants the name of the Lotus Sutra as their central practice. My wife Mina's family are Nichiren Buddhists). You can read more about how the temple came to do this here, in English ...

In this case, the character is an anime version of "Benzaiten/Benten", actually an Indian Goddess since way before the time of Buddha who has been popular in Buddhism thoughout its history, who may be described as the "Goddess of Music, Poetry, Learning, & Art, River Goddess, Patron of Children, Protector of the Nation." I believe that the "hammer" is one of her weapons to fight off disaster or ignorance. More common, I often see here carrying a lute, making her popular as a protector of musicians.

You can read much, much more about Benzaiten here (warning, features partial nudity 8) )